786 
STINGS 
of rheumatism, lumbago, paralysis, and 
perhaps dropsy. 
Numerous accounts have also appeared 
of various persons affected with rheuma¬ 
tism being greatly relieved by stings, espe¬ 
cially on the affected parts. Some others 
have reported that they could discover no 
appreciable effect one way or the other. 
It has happened at various field-day 
gatherings of beekeepers that certain par¬ 
ties who read these reports, having suf¬ 
fered severely because of rheumatic pains, 
have presented themselves and asked to 
have experts cause the bees to sting them 
on the affected parts. The operator picks 
a bee from a comb by the wings and presses 
it against the flesh until the sting is driven 
into the skin. This has been done on sev¬ 
eral occasions, and in each case the patients 
have said they experienced relief. 
At the Jenkintown field-day meeting, 
June 26, 1906, an old gentleman got up on 
the platform, and, before about one thou¬ 
sand people, stings were applied to his 
arm until nearly a hundred were imbedded 
deeply in the flesh. Did it hurt? Oh, yes! 
But the induced fever of the stings, he 
said, seemed to bring a warmth and toning 
of the muscles that were after all a relief: 
for, strangely enough, this large number of 
stings does not seem to affect a rheumatic 
leg or arm as it does a healthy member. 
It is a well-known fact that the homeo¬ 
pathic school has for many years used bee¬ 
sting poison in a remedy called “apis mel- 
lifica.” There are large wholesale drug- 
houses that buy stings taken from live bees. 
The stings are then dropped into small 
vials containing sugar of milk. Orders for 
bee-stings to the extent of 10,000 in one 
lot have been filled repeatedly. From a 
frame of live bees placed in a convenient 
position a bee is picked up with a pair 
of broad-nosed tweezers and immediately 
crushed. This act forces out the sting, 
which is immediately grasped by another 
pair of fine-pointed tweezers, when they 
are given a sharp rap over a wide-mouthed 
bottle. In this way the stings are extracted 
one by one until the whole number has been 
pulled. But the operator, after having ex¬ 
tracted four or five thousand stings, ex¬ 
periences a sort of tingling and itching 
sensation in the face, and finds he has to 
take a rest of some days before he can re¬ 
new his work. At other times he can ex¬ 
tract only a few hundred a day when that 
itching sensation will reappear. This is 
probably due to the fact that he inhales 
some of the fumes of the poison, which, 
entering the lungs, is absorbed by the blood 
and carried thru the system. 
At other times a pound or so of bees is 
put into a large wide-mouthed bottle or 
jar of alcohol. But the poison of the 
stings extracted in this way must neces¬ 
sarily be mixed with the other juices of 
the bees. 
Homeopathic physicians have “apis mel- 
lifica,” thus made from bee-stings, supplied 
to them in the form of a liquid. It smells 
not unlike bee-sting poison, and is often 
given internally to relieve the pain of 
rheumatism or swellings in general. But 
it is evident that a hypodermic injection 
of the bees, given directly on the affected 
part, would be a hundred times more pro¬ 
ductive of good results, assuming, of 
course, the poison does have a remedial 
effect. 
SMOKE NOT ALWAYS A PREVENTIVE OP 
BEE-STINGS. 
There are some colonies that, under some 
conditions, can not be conquered, even with 
smoke. If the atmosphere is a little chilly, 
or immediately after a rain, or if the sup¬ 
ply of nectar has suddenly stopped short 
off, a few colonies may be very hard to 
handle. While most bees under these con¬ 
ditions will yield to smoke, it seems to 
infuriate others. The only thing to do is 
to let them alone for the time being; then 
the next day or two, when the weather is 
favorable, blow a little smoke in at the 
entrance, raise the cover very gently, blow 
in a few whiffs more, when, presto! the 
fiends of the day before are as gentle as 
one could wish. 
MECHANICAL CONSTRUCTION AND OPERATION 
OF THE STING. 
After a bee has delivered its sting, and 
torn itself from that member, a bundle 
of muscles partly enveloping the poison- 
bag will be noticed. The curious part of 
it is that for some considerable time after 
the sting has been detached from the body 
of the bee, these muscles will work with a 
kind of pump-like motion forcing the sting 
